How Nested Functions Work, part 2

[Jeremie Pelletier]

language_fan wrote:
> Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:42:47 +0000, language_fan thusly wrote:
> 
>> I am not talking about getting a degree from some university. I have
>> already said that you can read it all yourself if you do not like the
>> pace they use to teach the same stuff. But still, it *is* computer
>> science. You cannot really invent it all by yourself without studying
>> existing work.
> 
> On the other hand, if you think you have re-invented from scratch 
> everything we know about computer science topics today, by all means, do 
> not hesitate to contact me. I am sure I can hire you. I am also sure 
> folks like Turing, Knuth, Hoare, Kleene, Milner, McCarthy etc. would be 
> proud of you since you can come up in a split second with much more 
> complex topics than they invented in their whole lifetime. In that case 
> it also makes sense to not call it computer science, because of geniuses 
> like you, it is not worth calling a true form of science anymore, just a 
> mere child's play.

It never was a true form of science to begin with, its like music 
theory: knowing music theory does not make you a musician, it only gives 
you the tools to describe music. A lot of influential musicians had 
little to no training in music theory just like a lot of influential 
programmers have no training in programming theory. Mathematics, 
physics, acoustics, to name a few, are sciences since their theory is 
used to describe the real world.

Computer science is closer to engineering than to science anyways. What 
I meant in my original rant is that its one thing to study what the 
people you named invented, its a completely different thing to 
understand how they invented it. You can understand the most complex 
algorithm in the world and not be able to write your own, yet you could 
know nothing about existing algorithms and come up with the smartest one.

Coming back to music, the theory evolved from people breaking the rules, 
from those who were thinking outside the box. Once their compositions 
got popular new theory was invented to describe what they did. If 
everyone follows theory blindly nothing will ever progress, no matter 
what the domain is.